


What it means to climb mountains

by maplewoodmoth



Series: Fly away home [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ever - Freeform, Gen, M/M, No character bashing in this fic, Ron Weasley-centric, and meeting your celebrity crush and just fuckin going for it trying to make friends, and not listening to your sister as often as you should (which i am familiar with), and self introspection and moping about friends (which i do understand), guess who is writing it, i just got a bug in my fingers for harry potter rare pairs so like, ron weasley appreciation, this is about chess (which i do not understand)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2020-05-13 16:18:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19254757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplewoodmoth/pseuds/maplewoodmoth
Summary: Fourth Year AU after Ron stops being friends with Harry.In which Ron tries to join chess club, (finally) listens to his little sister, makes a new friend, and makes a fool of himself, not in that specific order but close enough.





	1. Stone

**Author's Note:**

> poem at the beginning of each chapter will be a verse from The Language of Birds, by my man Richard Siken.

1.  
A man saw a bird and found him beautiful. The bird had a song inside him, and feathers. Sometimes the man felt like the bird and sometimes the man felt like a stone—solid, inevitable—but mostly he felt like a bird, or that there was a bird inside him, or that something inside him was like a bird fluttering. This went on for a long time.  
**

It sort of starts with a conversation with Ginny, who speaks to Ron in an angry whispered hiss over the breakfast table, where he is trying, desperately trying, to avoid looking at anyone and everyone and the banners and the moving posters and pins and Harry and Harry and Harry. There is a hopeless rage boiling in the pit of his stomach that has faded to an empty sort of aching that fills his joints and muscles and just makes him feel tired, tired, tired. 

“I have long stopped letting my affection and favor for him rule my life” his sister spits, hair unbrushed and uncaring, “when will you let it stop ruling yours?”. Because if that’s one thing the Weasley siblings have in common, if anything, beyond the hunger in their bones, their love for a challenge, their red hair and hand me down clothes- it’s their deep, pitting love for one Harry Potter. 

“I have nothing to say to you” Ron bites back, flinching “because there is nothing to say! He’s a prat who can’t be bothered to, to, to talk to me! About important things! So, there. Now bugger off Gin.”

“Morgana I fuckin wish. But no!! You’re my brother and I have to give a damn because your teenage melancholy is stinking up the common room.” At Ginny’s words, Ron bites angrily into another roll and steadfastly attempts to ignore her by taking a long drag of pumpkin juice. “And” Gin adds, “your sulking is pathetic. Go make some other friends or something”

Ron chews angrily on his bread “Oh shove off Ginny, I have plenty of friends, and you’re one to talk, you always hang out with Loony Lovegood!”

“Your roommates don’t count and Don’t. You dare. Insult Luna” Ginny brandishes her wand subtly, tip of it barely peeking over the table. Ron ignores it, but eyes it warily, because you don’t survive fourteen years with six outrageous siblings by ignoring a threat. 

“Fine” Ron shrugs and bites out “I’ll. Do something outside the common room. I’ll talk to other people. It’s not easy though, ya’know” he waves his right arm about, gesturing to the whole of the dining hall and all the people pretending not to eavesdrop, though they stop pretending and start ignoring them at Ron’s ferocious glare. “All anyone wants to talk about is that stupid tournament. Finding something different to talk about is bloody impossible!!” 

“Then join a goddamn club or something Ronald. It’s not that hard”

“Again, you’re one to talk, what do you do?” 

She sniffs, “for that matter brother, I am a crowning member of the Hex club, Herbology club, and the Fantastic Creatures that Cause Chaos club!” Ron is pretty sure the last club doesn’t exist but he’s too tired and full of spite to comment, so instead he says “Herbology club, when did that happen? You kill almost every plant you touch, brat.” 

Ginny glares at him, looking offended that he chose to comment on that rather than the Hex club, which for him is more believable- he’s seen what she can do to those who piss her off, and her Jelly Legs jinx is almost as nasty as her Bat Bogey Hex so. He believes it, but he’s still curious. “Neville is in it and he didn’t want to do it alone, so he asked me to join too” Ginny grins. Ron looks on suspiciously, but accepts it. 

“Alright” Ron says, “I’ll look into it”. 

“That’s all I ask of you, jerk” Ginny beams back at him, mood whiplash extraordinaire. 

Which is how Ron finds himself sitting alone at a table, voluntarily in the library, glaring at a chess board, with no one to play with because the chess club doesn’t actually start for another 2 hours, he just has nothing to do. And with the Quidditch pitch out of commission and teams temporarily disbanded, it’s not like he has many other hobbies to indulge in. Hermione is busy fluttering around Harry and his stupid champion self, and his stupid tasks, and everything is so stupid. 

God he’s so fucking lonely it’s unbelievable. 

He misses his dumb friends and their dumb faces but. Merlin he’s so mad! Ron is at least emotionally aware enough that if you do dumb attention seeking things, you at least tell your friends about it first and invite them along! He’s just so sick of being left behind again and again. Out of the spotlight, out of consideration, out of sight, out of mind. 

He’s so busy in thought, miserably glaring out the chess pieces who cower before him, that he doesn’t notice that someone’s taken the seat across from him. At first he thinks it’s Hermione, because who else would have such a large stack of books? But when the person cautiously looks over the top of the stack and doesn’t say a word to him, he finally yanks himself out of his thoughts and looks up. 

And finds himself gaping. 

An awkward looking Viktor Krum is busy looking around the library, eyes darting as though trying to find someone only he knows how to see. He is very determinedly ignoring Ron’s unflattering gaping and seems uncomfortable, but set in his decision to sit at the empty table in the back corner of the library. With Ron apparently. 

It’s only then that Ron realises his table, carefully chosen because of its keen vantage point to eye the majority of the library lines of sight, but enclosed enough away in it’s alcove to hide from those lines of sight, is probably a hot commodity for those who don’t want to draw attention to themselves but are paranoid enough to want to see the exits. He didn’t think about that when he chose it, he was just thinking that he wanted a quick advantage to see if anyone he knew would waltz into the library so he could make a quick getaway or remain out of sight. He firmly doesn’t think about how it’s something Harry would have done in his position, but well. He thinks that it’s something Harry would have done if he were in Krum’s position which. Well he shuts his mouth pretty quickly after that, tries to wipe the gobsmacked expression from his face, and tries to go back to valiantly glaring at his chess pieces, but he probably only manages a blank, panicked, stare. 

Viktor Krum. What the fuck. 

He glances up quickly at the now reading Krum, and glances back down just as quickly, his mind spinning. Krum seems uncomfortable, but engrossed in his book. Well, one of them at least. Ron feels a pang, missing Hermione, but dismisses it just as quickly. She’s made her choice to believe Harry and his lies, and he’s made his. There’s nothing to think about and everything to miss and he’s not going to do either of those things. 

The awkward but sort of companionable? silence stretches on what feels like 20 more minutes and Ron is almost sweating in his attempt to keep from saying anything. This is Viktor bloody Krum! He’s going to stick his foot in his mouth (again, like he usually does) and ruin everything! So yes, he’s panicking. His panic is stretching out to the breaking point when he hears a soft throat clearing. He doesn’t look up. 

“You haff been here almost an hour” a deep yet soft voice says. “I vas vondering if you vere vaiting for someone. You are scaring your chess pieces.”

“Um” HOLY BLOODY FUCK VIKTOR KRUM IS TALKING TO HIM. Ron says cleverly, “Chess Club” 

“I see” Krum says, awkwardly. “Are you the only member?” 

“Haaah no?” Ron stumbles. “No! No I just. I’ve never been and I’m waiting for it to start? But I guess I came here early because. Uh. Just because.” he finishes, like the goddamn genius he is. C’mon Ron!! He’s reading a book, ask about the book, this is just like talking to Hermione except different! He can do that! “So um, how about you? Joined any clubs here?” Holy fuck he is so bad at this. 

“No” Krum says. 

Welp.


	2. Chapter 2: Paint

2.  
A man saw a bird and wanted to paint it. The problem, if there was one, was simply a problem with the question. Why paint a bird? Why do anything at all? Not how, because hows are easy—series or sequence, one foot after the other—but existentially why bother, what does it solve?  
And just because you want to paint a bird, do actually paint a bird, it doesn’t mean you’ve accomplished anything. Who gets to measure the distance between experience and its representation? Who controls the lines of inquiry? We do. Anyone can.  
Blackbird, he says. So be it, indexed and normative. But it isn’t a bird, it’s a man in a bird suit, blue shoulders instead of feathers, because he isn’t looking at a bird, real bird, as he paints, he is looking at his heart, which is impossible.  
Unless his heart is a metaphor for his heart, as everything is a metaphor for itself, so that looking at the paint is like looking at a bird that isn’t there, with a song in its throat that you don’t want to hear but you paint anyway.  
The hand is a voice that can sing what the voice will not, and the hand wants to do something useful. Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep, I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart, says the heart.  
**

The silence becomes unbearable until even Ron can’t take it anymore and realises that his only two options are to either flee or fill the awkward silence with endless chatter. He decides he will choose the former. The latter way lies madness and extreme self-hatred. 

His mouth apparently does not get this memo. Well he already hates himself, what’s a little more gonna do? 

Quidditch, he thinks wildly, maybe I can talk to him about Quidditch. So he opens his mouth and, of course, nothing Quidditch related comes out. 

“The thing about chess is, that the rules make sense if you know ‘em, but the whole thing is hierarchical based so it’s like a piss off to the common people you know? But what’s funny about it is that when the Queen, the strongest player, was promoted, not introduced mind you, in 1475, there was like, this commotion in the community because why should the most powerful piece on the board be based off of a woman?”  
Krum is silent for a long, long, moment, and in those seconds, Ron is pretty sure that he goes through the 5 stages of grief. He thinks it’s 5 stages, at least. He’s never dealt with close grief; despite the war that happened when he was a baby, he knows the shape it leaves behind in other people, but never for himself. Anyway, Ron’s pretty sure he wants to die of embarrassment. 

When Krum finally does speak, it’s not to tell Ron to piss off like a normal person, or ask him what the bloody fuck is wrong with him but to ask, “What prompted the change in the Queen’s role?” Ron could absolutely cry, he really could. 

“Well” he starts, floundering, not expecting interest much less a response, “I think it’s historical based actually. See Queen Isabella of Castille, think we learned about her in History of Magic” he trails off, mumbling, “can’t remember what she did though; anyway, she was this powerful queen at the time, and the change in role, from weak, to King equivalent, to most powerful piece on the chess board, followed her ascent to from some, some nobody queen to well. The most powerful woman in Europe, I think,” he finishes. 

“Castile, that is in Spain, yes?” Krum asks, and Ron nods, “she was the sender of the America’s explorer in 1492, I believe. He was not very well received by the magical community over there, if I remember correctly, as it was already well established.” Ron nods again, and thinks, okay I’ve spoken enough, time to shut up, except then he doesn’t, and more chess related facts spill out of him like an overflowing sieve. 

“That’s really cool. Not surprising though, you know? Seems to be common with people being undermined despite how they work to establish themselves” Ron’s not actually certain if he’s talking about history anymore, or something more personal, but the look on Krum’s face seems to indicate that he’s still listening anyway which is a bloody novelty in itself. He keeps talking about chess because it seems to be safest at this point; “It’s kinda bum though, because while the Queen is the most powerful figure on the board, the King is the most important, so it was like, the rulemakers being susceptible to the modern thoughts of the time and sayin’ that while Isabella was powerful and important, she still wasn’t as important as her husband Ferdinand”. 

“Where did the Queen piece come from in the first place?” Krum questions, and Ron has to think for a moment, scratching his head as he thinks, rubbing his hand over his mouth to give himself a moment before he responds. 

“I’m” Ron pauses, “not actually sure,” he says. “I think it must have been some sort of advisor or someone, you know? But over time it probably changed with the politics and such”

Krum actually nods, and Ron basks in self relief for the moment. Then Krum asks another question and he’s off again, explaining more about the history of the game and the pieces, as the magical pawns and bishops wiggle around, ignored, on the board below them, and Krum’s book lies to the side, pages open and forgotten. 

They talk so much and, here’s the thing, they /keep/ talking. Two hours come and go, and before he knows it, other people are filling up the library corner where they’ve claimed. And they don’t notice. They are so busy talking, absorbed in tactics for how to win a hypothetical chess match that Ron doesn’t notice that they have another person at the table. Krum does, however, and like the betrayal it is, doesn’t say anything until they’re almost right upon the two of them. 

“Do you have any siblings?” Krum questions, randomly. Suddenly too, enough that Ron, thrown off guard, gets suspicious. 

“They’re right behind me aren’t they.” He states flatly, no question at all in his voice. And he must be right because he can see the way Krum is trying hard to keep his expression flat as Ron’s voice and he must be very very practiced at it because the expression of mirth is as gone as quickly as it appears. 

“That” Krum pauses, “depends. Do they have the read hair too?” 

Ron’s flat look must truly be hilarious, because he sees the flash of humor again on Krum’s face. 

“Pffffff” a rush of air hits the back of Ron’s head before a heavy but not unexpected weight drops onto his back and shoulders. “Itty bitty big brother being friendly to you, Mr. Stranger?” Ginny’s familiar voice questions, ringing through the library. 

Madam Pince may give Ginny a mean glare, but she’s gotten worse from their mum anyway, so all she does is lower her voice and hunker down lower, pressing more weight onto Ron, where he shifts his shoulders to get more comfortable but otherwise doesn’t move. 

“He has been kind” Krum says, honestly, and Ron is thrown. He probably shouldn’t be, they’ve been talking for roughly over 2 hours, but. Well. still. “The conversation has been good as well, and he is patient.” 

Ron can feel his face and ears turn beet red, but he knows better than to raise his shoulders and try and turtle away from the situation, what with Ginny on his shoulders. 

Speaking of, she pauses too, as if thinking probably, and then says “Most likely” Gin agrees, “but as interesting as it’s probably been, I’m going to have to steal him from you; prior commitment with his baby sister and all that” and she shakes him by the shoulders. 

“What?” Ron squawks crossly (and unattractively too: not that he should be thinking that but, well. Red face and scrunched up features do not a pretty Weasley make). 

Ginny shakes him by the shoulders again. “Chess club, you lout!! You promised! Morgana’s quilt, the club head has been glaring over here for close to half past!!” 

And he’s so embarrassed, Merlin. 

This time Ron really does try to scrunch his head between his shoulders, annoying little sister be damned, and Ginny shrieks as she goes toppling over, overbalancing and slamming her elbow from the top of his head to the table’s edge. And then she tries to put him in a head lock so he’s not paying much attention to Krum anymore, as the ensuing squabble gets him and Ginny kicked out of the library but. Before Madam Pince bodily shoves him and Ginny out of the library, he manages to grin cheekily at Krum and say “See you later, I guess?” 

And the crazy, crazy thing? 

Krum actually smiles back and says (SAYS, Merlin, Ron needs to stop overemphasizing the littlest things) “When we next meet, I will look forward to it” in his quiet, low voice.

Ron is shocked and just stands there for a moment, mindless of Ginny tugging at his arm and Madam Pince advancing menacingly toward their little corner, and while he’s shocked and laughing and beaming at Krum and the whole bloody situation, he’s not lonely. (Later he will realise, that through the whole time, he didn’t think about his anger or Harry or Hermione once, but that’s something else to think about for another time). 

And the most abso-bloody-lutely fantastic thing?   
They keep meeting up; Ron and Krum, they talk and keep talking again and again and again. 

They cover tactics (and it may transition to Quidditch moves, at some point, some distant point in the future; but that is a later conversation) and Ron offhandedly mentions that one of his best friends really likes Quidditch and is on the team, and so are his brothers but he's not. 

And maybe Krum asks why he’s not if he obviously cares about it (Ron has not, screw off Ginny, mentioned to Krum that he saw him at the World Cup. Nor, he said screw OFF Ginny!, has he said anything about the miniature Krum caricature that he still takes out some nights and watches stomp across his palm). 

Ron turns scarlet and mutters something along the lines of not really having a broom or a good one: because there are 7 Weasley kids and money is tight so they just share them? And it’s not like Ron can just bring his old Shooting Star or Cleansweep 5 with him to school if he’s not on the team, so. He just kinda uses the school brooms. (Which is good! But not if you’re competing.) 

Seeing Ron’s embarrassment must bring out pity or some similar emotion in Krum, because he drops the topic of brooms and Quidditch pretty easily when Ron tries to clumsily change the subject. 

So they talk about other things instead. Charms and Astronomy, which Ron would die before admitting he actually finds them interesting, even if they can be useful. He may not be the brightest lamp in the chandelier but even he knows how charms are dead useful around the house, and how astronomy is boring but peaceful (even if he’s not huge on the wishy interpretations) 

He knows about Care of Magical Creatures due to Charlie (and the majority of magical creature legislature amd regulation due to the whole Buckbeak debacle that made up their entirety of Third Year: he picked up a lot from both Percy and Hagrid that year for both very different reasons) and obviously Runes and Charms due to Bill; and the twins are good at fucking shit up so he's picked up a lot of random things and knowledge here and there from there. 

What he’s trying to get at here, is that Ron is no slouch when it comes to conversation and picking up random facts. And he’s emotionally aware enough (for the most part) to recognize, after years of Harry and his uncomfortableness with fame, when a person wants more than anything to just avoid a part of who they are and the expectations that come with it for a while.   
**

Ron notices that Hermione and Krum talk too, just as much; he’s aware enough of his emotions to realise that he’s jealous, but not really why. 

(Ron may be the most emotionally aware of his siblings, but when it comes to his own emotions he’s also dense as fuck. He’ll find out later that Krum and Hermione are just complaining to each other about hopeless crushes and being useless at anything other than their respective fields of knowledge. Like Hermione’s great with books and terrible with people and Krum is just, Bad At Talking. He likes to listen and read too and he’s interested in sports medicine or the wizard equivalent at least, but when it comes to people they both would prefer to bury themselves in literature and just shut down.)   
**

Ron knows himself, he thinks, like a bird knows it’s a bird. Not really at least, more like a bird can recognize itself in a mirror. A crow, a red-wing blackbird maybe. Robin probably. Something gangly and red and steadfast and determined, he thinks. 

So Ron knows himself, probably. Which is why this is so confusing: having 6 siblings, you don’t always talk everything out, you just- act- do things just because you have to do them before someone else does it to you first, harder and faster and meaner. But having 6 siblings, you learn to read yourself; even when you spend time crowded around a little kitchen table, elbowing your brother for the pepper, for acknowledgement, you still spend time alone. And thinking, always thinking. So Ron knows himself, knows his emotions. 

But just because he knows himself, recognizes himself, that doesn’t mean he’s accomplished anything. Not by knowing. Not by painting. Why think? Why know? Why do anything at all? Not how, because hows are easy—series or sequence, one foot after the other—but existentially why bother, what does it solve?

So he doesn’t think very hard or often on the subject; but still, it’s there. And he knows he will have to deal with it eventually but. Just not today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I googled way too much chess tactics and history for this chapter and then I got distracted with the history of the Queen piece and this is the result. 
> 
> Anyway the Cain Instinct is strong in Ginny as her first response is to always think first with her fists and I respect that.


	3. Torchlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Existential Crisis, Charlie, and Make-ups, oh my!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy the chapter guys!

3.  
They looked at the animals. They looked at the walls of the cave. This is earlier, these are different men. They painted in torchlight: red mostly, sometimes black—mammoth, lion, horse, bear—things on a wall, in profile or superimposed, dynamic and alert.  
They weren’t animals but they looked like animals, enough like animals to make it confusing, meant something but the meaning was slippery: it wasn’t there but it remained, looked like the thing but wasn’t the thing—was a second thing, following a second set of rules—and it was too late: their power over it was no longer absolute.  
What is alive and what isn’t and what should we do about it? Theories: about the nature of the thing. And of the soul. Because people die. The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does.  
The night sky is vast and wide.  
They huddled closer, shoulder to shoulder, painted themselves in herds, all together and apart from the rest. They looked at the sky, and at the mud, and at their hands in the mud, and their dead friends in the mud. This went on for a long time.

**

Of all the things that Ron and Krum talk about when they meet up in the quiet corners of the library, or at the edges of the Quidditch pitch, or even sitting at the edges of the Lake, waving lazily to the giant squid; they don’t talk about why they’re alone. 

Other friends don’t really come up: classes come up, wizard sports come up, chess comes up, family (of course family comes up, with Ginny around, and the twins around- creeping gleefully around the edges of Ron’s life, orbiting around Harry and popping up when they’re least wanted and most expected. They’re kind of like mum’s weekly letters and questions Ron always leaves mostly unanswered). 

But maybe there’s a reason that they’re both existing quietly by their lonesome, together. Maybe. Ron doesn’t know? 

It’s kind of like talking to a mix of Harry and Hermione, Ron realises, though he tries not to compare, because Krum is his own person but he’s also so much not what he was expecting?   
Krum’s quiet, right until you get him asking questions, or onto a topic that he’s curious about, and then he’s off. 

**

He’s terrified of losing: this, Ron knows. What little he has is fleeting and ephemeral. Most things are, Ron knows. 

Most things, like happiness, don’t last as long as his has managed to. He was born in war, after all. He knows the taste of fear and loss on the back of his tongue like most people know the taste of sugar in their morning cup of tea. Grief may be unfamiliar to him, but he remembers the games Mum and Dad used to play with them, in the early days. Knows from the way his brothers would play it with him and Ginny later on as they got older. Games like who can stay silent the longest, or who can find the best places to hide when it gets noisy outside or who can run the fastest and not leave their partner behind? Or who can pack what they need (minimally) in the quickest amount of time. Ron knows these things, knows things like large teddy bears are impractical, even if he loves his (before Fred and George turned it into a spider that is)- knows it’ll be one of the things left behind, knows it’s a luxury that he doesn’t have room for in his life. 

Like friendship, he supposes, it was only good for so long. 

What is alive and what isn’t and what should we do about it? Theories: about the nature of the thing. And of the soul. Because people die. The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does.  
The night sky is vast and wide.  
They huddled closer, shoulder to shoulder, painted themselves in herds, all together and apart from the rest. They looked at the sky, and at the mud, and at their hands in the mud, and their dead friends in the mud. This went on for a long time.

Friendship however, like family, like bonds that tie you so tightly together, are stronger than the bonds forged between a boy and his material objects. Ron supposes then that this means friendship means more than a once held teddy bear. He doesn’t see how that matters, in the end, if the friends you give yourself to so completely just leave you in the end anyway. 

Maybe that’s why it’s worth so much, the Ginny that resides in Ron’s head just to tell him he’s an impractical idiot says, because they give themselves to you too? Whatever, Ron dismisses. Best not to think about it too much, or worry over the inevitability of leaving and whatnot. Best just enjoy what he has, when he has it, before it’s gone. Before they leave. 

**

Krum doesn’t leave. 

Ron is boggling at the whole concept, Merlin’s underpants, because maybe just maybe he’s made a new friend, one he didn’t make because he lives in the same dormitory as they do. He wonders how he managed such a feat, because who would choose to be friends with him? Willingly? What does Ron have to give that’s so worthwhile enough to convince someone that he’s worth the effort to spend time with? 

Hermione (and Harry) had been relatively easy, Ron supposes. Defeat a mountain troll together and you’re stuck together for life; because some things bond people together well, and one of those somethings is shared trauma. 

(Ron doesn’t realise, but the thing that draws people to him is his kindness. His willingness to open his arms and offer up a roast beef sandwich when he has nothing else to offer. His no questions asked for loyalty and willingness to accept people as they are, because sometimes that’s all that you really want without even knowing it.)

Krum though, Ron can’t seem to figure out what makes him tick. Is it the company? Is he lonely (did he recognize the loneliness in Ron too, he wonders)? Is it the conversation? Nothing more interesting than what he would get from his conversations with Hermione, Ron imagines. She talks more and is loads more clever and witty- it could be the puns, actually. Ron’s shameless when it comes to slippin in punny opportunities, it comes from hours thinking alone for amusement and also that time Fred and George jinxed him to speak in nothing but terrible jokes and puns for 3 days because he used up all the hot water in their house by accident. 

Nonetheless, Ron’s getting a little frustrated about Krum and why he still bothers to talk to Ron. Well he was, until he brought it up to Ginny and she slapped him upside the head and told him to accept things going well for him, for once. 

He decides to take her advice. 

**

And then before he knows it, it’s the evening of the first task, and Ron has to watch the boy he’s grown to call friend, and the boy he dismissed as a friend go head to head against motherfucking dragons. 

On one hand it’s absolutely wonderful to see Charlie the night before the task, Merlin Ron’s missed him. On the other hand when Ron pours his heart out to Charlie one night after they’ve hugged and exchanged manly back-slaps and news, Charlie grabs Ron, the littlest and lankiest brother in a headlock and, refusing to let go, chastises him. 

“Ron, littlest bother of the fruit of my mother’s womb” Charlie starts. 

“Please never phrase our relationship like that ever again,” Ron interrupts, begging. 

“Pardon my language but what, may I ask, the fuck were you thinking? Leavin’ Harry alone like that? After all you’ve been through and this is what makes you snap? On one hand I knew that patience of yours wasn’t endless but what the bloody hell Beansprout? He’s your mate! Your buddy! The bosom best friend of your heart! You’ve known him for years now and what makes you think he’d do something this outta character? From what you’ve told me he absolutely hates attention like this- so what would make him do a complete flip to do something this bloody stupid and illegal might I add?” Charlie growls out, breathless. “Wait don’t answer that last part you kids love breaking rules like you love breathing.”

“I” Ron starts struggling, “have no idea what you’re talking about” he sniffs, as dignified as he can be breathless, red in the face, and half hanging sideways. “I am the most rule abiding of our entire family.”

“Yeah” Charlie says, wry, “I know, it’s really sad. Anyway you’re avoiding the questions.”

“What is this muggle jeopardy?” Ron asks, “You never said what the questions were, oh brother dearest.” 

“What is that?” Charlie asks, caught off guard, “no wait don’t tell me, save your conniving tricks for dad you little bugger. The questions” he pauses magnanimously, “were why would Harry change his stripes so suddenly now if he had any time to choose, and why did this make you snap of all things?” 

Ron goes beet red, caught in his act of avoidance and at the personalness of the questions. He knows Charlie, knows he avoids the close conversations, prefers actions to words and dragons to people. So why, Ron bemoans internerally, did he have to get so people-smart and aware now of all times? What happened to him that made him so, so mature while he was away? 

“Weeeeeeell.” 

“Well.” Charlie drops Ron.

“Yowch!” He says, rubbing his poor sore head from where he lies on the cold unforgiving grass, which he glares at, if only because he knows glaring at Charlie again would get him whacked solidly. They’re in the woods, at the border between the great lawn and the forest, so there’s a lot of grass to glare at. Whatever’s in the woods, Charlie won’t let him see, so he knows it’s gotta be good. Either way, Charlie won’t let him see, which is why he’s stuck here now, answering hard questions that he’d prefer to leave unanswered aloud. He knows the responses, knows his reasons- he’d just prefer not to share them. It looks like he won’t really have a choice in the matter now, of course. 

Charlie waits, patiently and looming. 

“It’sbecauseI’mtiredofbeingsecondbest” Ron finally lets out in a rush. 

“Pardon?”

“I’m tired,” Ron says, exhausted for all that it’s only 5 pm at night, despite the darkness encroaching on the skyline, “of being second best, second choice, second hand at everything.”

“I know he probably didn’t put his name in the Goblet of Fire, well, now I know that at least. But I just. I’m just. I’m just tired of always being overlooked and Harry gets all the attention and I’m just. Just. Just ugh.”

“Just?” Charlie prompts Ron, rolling his hands for Ron to continue. 

“Just… me. Plain, not good enough, me.” Ron admits, voice small. Ron’s never been small in his life: he’s always been open and lanky, taller than the average, taking up more room than the average with his motions, with his excitement. Admitting that he feels lesser, feels small and useless and overlooked? That’s not a part of his character that Charlie’s ever seen, and in that moment, Charlie feels grief for his not so little, littlest brother. Feels like he’s failed as a brother for not seeing this sooner, not asking about this sooner, not caring about it until it’s already past his brother’s breaking point. 

Without a word, Charlie drops to his knees on the dirt, uncaring of the mud getting all over his work robes, and bundles his brother up into a hug so dearly and desperately needed. They sit there for a long, long time, silence between the two. 

**

October 31st to November 24th. Twenty five whole days. Twenty five whole days being mad at and not talking to Harry. 

Twenty five days too long, if you ask Ron (but nobody does). Twenty five lonely, frustratingly lonely days, if you ask Harry (but nobody does). 

Ron feels like he just gained back feeling in a limb that’s been asleep for far too long. There’s pins and needles and uncomfortableness, sure (some things are worth admitting you’re wrong for) but it’s worth it. 

Ron feels like an ass, like he’s waited too long to admit he was wrong, to admit that he was jealous, to admit that he was lonely. Ron feels like all the nasty things Hermione probably thinks about him when he mouths off to a professor. 

Waiting until after you see your friend (friends? Is Krum a friend? Ron feels like he might be, at this point) face off against a gods unforgiving DRAGON to apologize is kind of a shite thing to do, but Ron’s stubborn. 

So is Charlie fortunately, and he’s willing to talk some sense into Ron well into the late hours of the night. Telling Ron things that he should have heard y e a r s ago. Things that Ron especially needed to hear from his most distant and dangerous big brother. When Charlie speaks, people listen. Not because he’s usually got some madcap idea to suggest about magical beasts and law, but because he’s quiet and rarely speaks unless he has something he thinks important to say. So when Charlie speaks, Ron listens. And listens and listens. It helps set his head on straight in the same way that conversations with Ginny do, but more cathartic. 

Either way, it’s been a long, long, 25 whole days and Ron is so bloody happy to have his best friends back with much less awkward conversations and avoidance between all of them. Hermione included. Her pep talks and over the top insinuations that he should apologize to Harry for being an idiot were getting to be a bit much. Like he gets it, he’s emotionally compromised ok? Not a big deal in the larger scheme of things, ‘Harry fought off a Dragon, Hermione, That’s A Bit More Cool And Important Than My Emotions, OK?’

Hermione and Ron are still a little mad at each other because Ron thinks she’s getting too cozy with too many champions as they gotta support Harry! And that means that they can’t help the other champions no matter how cute they are. 

Anyway he thinks Krum has a thing for Hermione and the other way around because hey they spend time together and that’s pretty much how things like that work right? (By that definition he also would be dating or into Krum and he studiously doesn’t think of that because like. By that logic he’d also be into Harry which. Is weird ok. And also they give him different emotions, alright?)

Cedric, who has been trying to get Harry and Ron back together for ages on Harry’s end, is absolutely ecstatic. Cedric also mentions offhandedly to Krum that he’s so glad that Harry and his boyfriend, the funny redhead Ron have finally made up because Harry seems so much happier and more relaxed, and something small in Viktor; hope-shaped and beating a warm, tentative red, breaks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charlie basically wrote himself into the chapter and I respect him so much for that. It's like I get at my computer with my outline and then the characters all start shouting at me and my draft ends up completely different. 
> 
> Can you tell where I gave up motivation on writing this you guys? I sure can. Anyway, sorry this is so late, things have been really busy on my end, and really stressful, but I've been writing little by little and bit by bit, personal projects aside. I'm still chuggin guys!! 
> 
>  
> 
> Hit me up on my tumblr under the same name if you wanna talk to me about my fics or just fangirl about HP with me in general!!! I get lonely!


End file.
